In support of Chris Sciabarra


Kat

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Ellen, I'm sorry that you thought I was bullying ("hectoring") you. I've re-read my post twice, and I don't see (or hear: I read it out loud) what you're referring to. Basically, I'm just emphatically disagreeing with you and trying to substantiate my disagreement.

Well, that's interesting to me in itself, Roger, that you don't hear the "hectoring" tone. To me you sounded as if you were trying to hammer some point into my head -- and I'm still not clear what point, where you think we're disagreeing. It seems as if you think I was trying to defend Diana, but I wasn't and even said I wasn't.

You write:

I still think there is a contradiction or factual conflict involved. You say Diana didn't plan the timing of her piece. I say she most certainly did. It's certainly possible, even likely, that she wrote it in an unplanned way, on impulse, in a white heat of inspiration or zeal. Yet, she deliberately chose exactly when to release it - in late April, right before finals and trip, when she could have waited until June so it could be discussed with her full partipation at her leisure. That is what everyone is controverting about -- the poor timing of her release of the piece.

What I was saying is simply that she could not have planned to write THAT document in advance of the first week of April because she didn't have the two key features which she used as the centerpiece of her case until then. Maybe we're miscommunicating on the word "planning." I had understood the question to be, why didn't she write it earlier? My point was that she couldn't have, not that document (though, as indicated, I thought there was the earlier intention to say something about her now taking the gloves off re Chris's work). I wasn't attempting to defend her putting the thing together in haste and posting it just when she'd be taking finals and then leaving, if that's what you understood me to be doing.

Anyway...the perils of list communication.

Speaking of which, I'll be Inn Communicado (as a personage from another list might say) for the next couple days -- getting ready to leave for a Jung Association lecture tonight, and then there's a workshop tomorrow. I hope I won't have been found guilty when next I have time to check list posts of having ducked out of controversy... ;-)

Cheers,

Ellen

___

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Ellen, thanks for clarifying your position. It seems we were (or I was) arguing at cross purposes. Sorry.

A little over 2 weeks ago, I posted these comments elsewhere. They relate to Chris's lapse in wisdom/judgment in handing Diana the name of the one the ARI scholars who had confidentially told him about fear of publishing in JARS. Here are the remarks in toto (minus the other person's comments to whom I was responding):

[...]

From my own partial acquaintance with the unfolding of events, it is apparent to me that Diana's attack on Chris was something she had been planning for a long time (as a followup to her attacks on the Brandens and Kelley/Hudgins/TOC). The unflattering things he said about her in emails and phone conversations to others were just (part of) the pretext she used for her attack.

[...]

Yes. I consider below the Catch-22 facing any ARI scholars that Diana might quiz about this. But here I'll just say that Diana is no idiot. She is a fool, even an unbalanced one, but she is not stupid. I don't know how many of us she thinks she is fooling, but as long as everyone is well aware of ARI's "right of disassociation," you're not going to get a straight answer out of its scholars, not publicly. So, Diana's allegations against Chris are tainted by that very fact.

[...]

Oh, I think Chris goofed worse than that. He ~knew~ that Diana had already viciously attacked the Brandens and TOC (et al), and that she was in Taliban-like manner allowing similar vicious attacks on him on her blog (Noodle Food), so he had good reason to suspect that he was next on her hit list. Yet, when pressed for names of ARI scholars that were being intimidated out of contributing work to JARS, instead of stonewalling, he actually supplied a name! And what was this person to do, upon being questioned by Diana? Admit to being intimidated, run the very high risk that Diana would blow the whistle and ARI would withdraw its support -- or deny being intimidated and leave Chris dangling in the wind? What would ~you~ do, if your dream of substantive publication depended on the good-will of the vendetta-ridden dogmatists at ARI? Good-bye, confidante relationship with Chris? No? Well, then you're a better person than the mystery ARI scholar was.

But yes, Chris should have stayed clear of Diana. You don't cooperate with someone who has already bashed several of your friends. If you do, you have no one to blame but yourself when she turns on you. (Well, you can blame her, too, but she's not likely to listen!)

I say all this, knowing that my good friend Chris realizes what a blockhead he was for cooperating with Diana's witch hunt, and that people closer to him than I am have been harder on him than I am being here.

REB

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  • 3 weeks later...

Chris likes to look for the good, even if most of it looks like crap. I really like that approach, as you spent your life looking for positives... but sometimes, when you do this-- I tend to do this too-- you do get bitten once in a while. The main reason why I don't "fall for" denunciatory tribalism is that I did get bitten, badly. I learned, got up, and went on with my life. I can still look for the good, but I can also tell if something's not-so-good-- but I had to learn via life experience.

But looking for the good doesn't necessarily mean you're oblivious.

What's really awful is when all a person does is look for the bad-- especially in other people, and are totally oblivious to human good-- to human potential to change, grow, learn, and be joyful.

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